Visual effects can be done on a home computer these days, and they can look damn good if the director knows how to shoot for VFX. Making assets like flying futuristic cars or spaceships would be more expensive than things like fire or explosions or gigantic holograms.

I wouldn't DQ any script for budget based on VFX unless you know what it would take to make it happen. Even VFX that might be expensive on the page can be done for cheap as long as the filmmakers aren't worried about how it actually looks.

Visual effects can be done on a home computer these days, and they can look damn good if the director knows how to shoot for VFX. Making assets like flying futuristic cars or spaceships would be more expensive than things like fire or explosions or gigantic holograms.

I wouldn't DQ any script for budget based on VFX unless you know what it would take to make it happen. Even VFX that might be expensive on the page can be done for cheap as long as the filmmakers aren't worried about how it actually looks.

I didn't DQ any although I thought several did not meet the horror and/or sci-fi element so I rated all - note - seems to be that DQ/did not read have the same impact on the scoring anyway - just not counted.  So I think if you wanted to downgrade a script for not meeting the parameters you would actually have to downgrade your rating for that factor rather than DQ ing it.

Anyway - the budget one in Sci/Fi horror ones are a bit of a challenge for me to assess since I don't know what is easily done with cheap computer animation vs. costly special effects. i.e., I can kind of tell when a drama or a thriller is going to be expensive - but sci-fi - horror images are much harder for me to get my arms around given the state of technology.

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No DQ’s here, but as the challenge had a specific budget theme, not an open budget, I have kept that in mind, but only on a couple, the rest I have let fly.

I seem to be more relaxed on the genre element- again, the right music, angle, colour of shot etc can change a script.

This made me think. On the dystopian angle, which occurred a few times, I would love an open budget, give it all, challenge - what bleak future we could all predict. Spooky.

Or the dystopian present;)

Did you not see we turned The Dollmaker into a short film? I helped produce it and just a few days ago it went over 17 million views on YouTube. They are working on a feature version at the moment and keeping me in the loop, which is exciting.

[redacted].

Class.

I kept a handful of his scripts from Movie Poet. Great stuff.